A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus and a centesis supporting method, and more particularly, to an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus and a centesis supporting method that can visually recognize a centesis needle insertion status into a target region in a patient by automatically tracking the inserted needle while observing ultrasound image data.
B. Background of the Invention
An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus transmits and receives ultrasound through a plurality of ultrasound transducers installed in a tip portion of an ultrasound probe to and from a diagnostic target region in an object. By simply touching an ultrasound probe to the surface of a patient's body, image data of the target region is generated. The generated image data can be displayed on a monitor in real time. An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus is widely used as an apparatus for diagnosing the status of various target organs in a patient's body.
Various conventional centesis supporting methods using an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus have been proposed for performing an invasive examination or medical treatment by means of a centesis needle (hereinafter, simply referred to as “needle”) under observation of ultrasound image data (hereinafter, simply referred to as “image data”) displayed in real time. By performing such centesis needle insertion into an examination/medical treatment target region (hereinafter, simply referred to as “target region”) under observation of two dimensional (2D) image data or three dimensional (3D) image data of the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus, the proposed methods have improved safety and efficiency of the examination or medical treatment.
For instance, Japanese Patent Application Publication H6(1994)-205776 has proposed a centesis supporting method for performing a centesis into a target region under observation of ultrasound image data by mounting a centesis needle on a needling adapter attached to an ultrasound probe in order too generate and simultaneously display 2D image data of a centesis needle inserted into a patient body and a target region. By observing the 2D image data, a needle is inserted into the target region while confirming a position of the needle and an inserting direction.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Publication 2005-323669 has proposed another centesis supporting method for displaying data by composing a first image data including a target region generated based on volume data acquired from a 3D area in a patient and a second image data including a predetermined insertion pathway of a needle detected by a position sensor in a needling adapter.
According to these conventionally proposed centesis supporting methods, while the needle is accurately inserted along a preliminarily set up pathway (a predetermined inserting pathway, it is possible to travel a tip portion of the needle to the target region. However, in reality it actually happens that the needle is inserted in an unexpected direction due to unevenness of living body hardness along the predetermined inserting pathway. When the needle during travel slips off the predetermined inserting pathway, according to the conventional position detecting method using 2D image data, the needle disappears from the image data. Further, according to the conventional position detecting method using 3D image data, it also becomes impossible to accurately determines the position or the direction of the needle inserted into a body, since the needle is inserted in a different direction from the predetermined inserting pathway indicated on the image data detected by a position sensor.